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Home Retirement/Living

We’ve Found These Are The Downsides To Living In Portugal

House-Hunting In Portugal

Kathleen Peddicord by Kathleen Peddicord
May 21, 2023
in Retirement/Living
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Rippling sea by village of Carvoeiro, Algarve, Portugal.

Alamy/Utterström Photography

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I’ve been spending time in Portugal since 2013.

I knew after the first visit that this was a special place… a place where I wanted to spend as much time as a busy life like mine could handle.

So my husband and I went house-hunting…

We searched up and down the country—a little farmhouse surrounded by an orange-tree orchard… an old villa overlooking a magnificent sandstone-cliff coast… an ancient village cottage with an arched, medieval passageway in Lisbon…

We considered all the options.

Until, at last, we found a charming apartment for sale in the historic seaside city of Lagos.

It was a block from a plaza square, with a cute little balcony and a rooftop terrace with a wide ocean view.

Best of all, because this market had been so long ignored, it only cost 99,500 euros.

We ended up renovating that apartment and then we rented it out for cash flow when we weren’t there ourselves.

Ultimately, we had to sell. I mean… how could we not?

The property had increased in value significantly, and my husband, ever the property investor, couldn’t pass up the chance to more than double our investment in less than two years.

We were able to sell quickly for capital gains of 125%.

My search for a new pied-à-terre in this country continues to this day.

Here’s Why This Matters To You…

Over the years we’ve been active in Portugal, we’ve met a lot of people and made a lot of connections.

We’ve gotten to know this country well… north to south, cities to coast.

Beautiful bay near Lagos town, Algarve region, Portugal
Adobe Stock/kite_rin

Here at Live And Invest Overseas, we’re famous for our “warts-and-all” approach when presenting opportunities and making recommendations.

This has presented us with a real challenge in the case of Portugal. Honestly, there isn’t much to complain about.

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-The Weather

Winters in some places are colder than you might expect for such a sunny place…

And some coastal towns become very quiet off-season.

-Cars And Electronics

Cars are expensive to maintain, and the price of electronics and other consumer goods can be more expensive than in the States…

-The Language

Have you tried learning Spanish? As someone who has made efforts to speak both Spanish and Portuguese, I’d say Portuguese is twice as difficult.

The good news, though, is that the locals understand this… and almost everyone you’ll meet speaks English to some level.

Plus, North American (and British, etc.) movies and TV shows are broadcast in their original English.

That said, we recommend that, if you, like we, decide you want to spend time or money in this beautiful, sun-drenched country, you make the effort to learn at least basic vocabulary. It’s only polite, right?

What else?

-The Cost Of Living

Well, while, as we’ve been pointing out lately, Portugal’s cost of living is on average 32.5% lower than in America… and rents can be a whopping 42.6% cheaper despite the fact that most people live within 50 miles off the coast… not everything is cheap.

Gas costs the equivalent of around US$7 a gallon. Yikes. Still, keeping things in perspective, gas is a very small portion of a typical retiree’s monthly budget.

If you need to upgrade your phone or computer, you can expect to pay about 25% more than you would in the States. Electronics are pricey. We’d recommend replacing any devices that need replacing before making your move.

After all these years of close inspection, those are the only negatives we’ve been able to identify.

Big picture and bottom line, Portugal checks every box on the retiree’s checklist.

Until next time,
Kathleen Peddicord signature
Kathleen Peddicord
Founding Publisher, Overseas Opportunity Letter

Tags: cost of living in portugalexpats in portugallive in Portugalliving in portugalmove to PortugalPortugalRetire In Portugalweather in Portugal
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Kathleen Peddicord

Kathleen Peddicord

Kathleen Peddicord has covered the live, retire, and do business overseas beat for more than 30 years and is considered the world's foremost authority on these subjects. She has traveled to more than 75 countries, invested in real estate in 21, established businesses in 7, renovated historic properties in 6, and educated her children in 4.

Kathleen has moved children, staff, enterprises, household goods, and pets across three continents, from the East Coast of the United States to Waterford, Ireland... then to Paris, France... next to Panama City, where she has based her Live and Invest Overseas business. Most recently, Kathleen and her husband Lief Simon are dividing their time between Panama and Paris.

Kathleen was a partner with Agora Publishing’s International Living group for 23 years. In that capacity, she opened her first office overseas, in Waterford, Ireland, where she managed a staff of up to 30 employees for more than 10 years. Kathleen also opened, staffed, and operated International Living publishing and real estate marketing offices in Panama City, Panama; Granada, Nicaragua; Roatan, Honduras; San Miguel de Allende, Mexico; Quito, Ecuador; and Paris, France.

Kathleen moved on from her role with Agora in 2007 and launched her Live and Invest Overseas group in 2008. In the years since, she has built Live and Invest Overseas into a successful, recognized, and respected multi-million-dollar business that employs a staff of 35 in Panama City and dozens of writers and other resources around the world.

Kathleen has been quoted by The New York Times, Money magazine, MSNBC, Yahoo Finance, the AARP, and beyond. She has appeared often on radio and television (including Bloomberg and CNBC) and speaks regularly on topics to do with living, retiring, investing, and doing business around the world.

In addition to her own daily e-letter, the Overseas Opportunity Letter, with a circulation of more than 300,000 readers, Kathleen writes regularly for U.S. News & World Report and Forbes.

Her Best-Seller book, "How to Retire Overseas: Everything You Need to Know to Live Well (for Less) Abroad," published by Penguin Random House, is the culmination of decades of personal experience living and investing around the world.

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